


Come hell or high water

by Rinniebee



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne is NOT a great husband, Bruce Wayne is a Good Dad, Bruce and Talia are married and never got divorcef, Canon? What’s canon???, F/M, Jason Todd-centric, Jason and Bruce TALK bc I like communication, Jason was adopted by Bruce at 9 bc I like that timeline better, No editing we die like mne, Seriously this follows no specific timeline lol, Talia Al Ghul is a Good Mom, Talia never killed Damian bc that storyline is WHACK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 21:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21204722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinniebee/pseuds/Rinniebee
Summary: From what Jason knew, Bruce and Talia’s paths had diverged sometime before Jason had even stepped foot into the manor, but no one would bring their ex-husband’s adopted son back to life as a gift without feeling some semblance of love. And after hours of thinking and analyzing Bruce’s weird personality, Jason was sure Bruce felt something too. Unfortunately, when Bruce faced complex emotions he shut down and treated everything with a sort of clinical coldness. Jason knew that better than most, but that was exactly how he knew that Bruce still carried a torch.ORThe fic I wrote because I’m tired of Talia being demonized.





	Come hell or high water

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> First, I want to apologize to everyone reading my last Batman fic and waiting for me to finish it. I do hope to finish it one day but I am very busy with working on an original novel.
> 
> This is something I just banged out in an hour bc it wouldn’t leave me alone. If you follow me on tumblr (or even if you don’t), you might have seen this post of mine (https://ribbon-couture.tumblr.com/post/175616986400/heres-the-thing-thoughif-damian-wayne-deserves) floating around about Talia. There’s not enough content in defence of her on here, so I wanted to write something quick and easy!

Jason stared at his living room ceiling, lost in a haze of thought about his life. The past three years had been wild to say the least. He’d come back from the dead, almost successfully killed his own dad, became a slumlord, and had miraculously made some genuine friends in the process. The more years that went by, the more the crazier aspects of Jason’s life seemed to calm down.

If someone had told him it’d all be okay three years ago, Jason might have shot them. But, as it were, everything  _ was _ okay for the most part. 

In the past year and a half, Jason had somehow finessed his way back into the family. His relationship with Bruce could still be rocky. Dick was still a little skeptical every now and then, Tim and Duke both were overly cautious, and Damian was Damian but they’d lapsed into some sort of normalcy. Truth be told, it was a dream come true. Despite his reluctance to admit it, Jason had always yearned for an in with his family. A place where he could belong even when the pit madness was making his mind swirl with anger and his justice for vengeance had him decapitating Gotham’s most disgusting. Jason had always wanted to end his days back home with Bruce and Alfred.

Of course that had been impossible up until recently. Although the relationship between Red Hood and Batman was all kinds of better, Jason still slept in various safe houses scattered across the east end of Gotham. He didn’t have a real home and it wasn’t because he was unwelcome at the manor, if anything he was almost  _ too _ welcome there, but lately, anytime he stepped inside he was overtaken by guilt.

There were a lot of things to feel guilty about when it came to his relationship with Bruce, but for the most part he just felt guilty that he  _ had _ a relationship with the man—especially when the woman who loved him the most didn’t.

He blamed Damian for this new hollowed out feeling in his chest. The kid just couldn’t leave well enough alone, not even when Bruce had made it clear that he’d moved on from Talia al Ghul a long time ago. And now Jason was laying here wondering if that were true.

From what Jason knew, Bruce and Talia’s paths had diverged sometime before Jason had even stepped foot into the manor, but no one would bring their ex-husband’s adopted son back to life as a gift without feeling some semblance of love. And after hours of thinking and analyzing Bruce’s weird personality, Jason was sure Bruce felt something too. Unfortunately, when Bruce faced complex emotions he shut down and treated everything with a sort of clinical coldness. Jason knew that better than most, but that was exactly  _ how _ he knew that Bruce still carried a torch.

But that didn’t mean Bruce’s actions weren’t fucked up. They  _ were _ . The way Bruce had struggled approaching Jason after he was resurrected was fucked up. The way he had a tendency to dismiss every little thing Talia had ever done for him was fucked up. The way Bruce handled almost everything was fucked up.

And Jason didn’t get it, so he’d talked to Talia.

She wasn’t willing to tell him anything but Jason knew how to proddle until he got the information he wanted. The information he was given was a bit more than he bargained for, but he hadn’t complained.

He only had one question: How did Bruce go from loving someone so much that he’d  _ killed _ for them to barely acknowledging their existence at all?

Growing up, Jason hadn’t even known Bruce had a wife until he found a picture of Talia hidden in his room. It wasn’t even well hidden, not for the bat. Jason had been looking for something he couldn’t remember now and Bruce had told him to check his right nightstand table but Jason had accidentally checked the left. The picture was _right_ _there_. Apparently, it had been taken on their wedding night. Talia was dressed in a simple slip, laying on the bed with a red rose in her hand. She looked happy.

“Who’s this?” Jason asked when Bruce had come to find him after he’d been gone for too long.

Bruce had practically flinched. Swallowing his pride was never an easy thing for a man like him to do. “She’s… She’s my wife, Jason. Her name is Talia. You don’t need to worry about her. I doubt you’ll ever meet. We’re currently going through a separation.”

A separation that had started years ago and had still yet to end in divorce. But maybe Talia just refused to sign the papers. It seemed like something she would do. Maybe that was the whole reason Bruce had suggested that only the Bat could marry the Cat. Selina Kyle couldn’t have Bruce Wayne when Bruce Wayne belonged to someone else on paper, Jason supposed. Such an action wouldn’t have been the most fucked up thing Talia had ever done, anyway.

And that’s the thing. Jason wasn’t  _ blind _ to the fact that Talia was just as fucked up as Bruce, but he knew better than anyone that she wasn’t  _ evil _ . Anyone who dared to argue otherwise could easily take a bullet to the knee. Wouldn’t kill, but it’d still hurt like hell.

“Your loyalty to my mother is strange to me, Jason,” Damian had told him once while it was just them in the cave. 

Bruce had been in the shower, Tim was off-world somewhere, Duke was already in bed, Dick was in Blud, and Alfred had gone back up to brew a pot of coffee for Bruce who refused to sleep and steep some tea for Jason who decided to be nice and keep the old man company.

Damian had claimed he was heading to bed, but he lingered in the cave, watching Jason with his careful green eyes before speaking up. Jason wasn’t sure when they’d patched the emotional distance that made Damian go from calling him  _ Todd _ to his given name, but he didn’t dare bring it up.

“Yeah? Why’s that, brat?”

The statement from Damian was random and had nothing to do with the case they were currently working on, but if baby brother was extending some sort of communication branch, Jason wasn’t going to be stupid enough to reject it. He might have been raised by Bruce for a couple years, but Catherine Todd had been a real stickler for  _ Let’s talk about our feelings. _ Willis complained that it would make Jason less of a man, but he’d always felt better after crying in his mom’s arms.

Damian huffed. “Because she is not  _ your _ mother. She’s mine and even I…” He faltered, frowning as if he’d done something despicable. “I left her behind.”

“She gave you up,” Jason corrected him with an indifferent wave of his hand. “Wanted you to meet your dad and all that.”

It’d been three years since then, strangely enough. Puberty had started to rid Damian of all the baby fat on his face, shifting his features more toward al Ghul than Wayne. Jason knew Bruce saw it. Damian was becoming the spitting image of his mother, an unignorable reminder of the fact that Bruce and Talia had been something more than anything Bruce had ever been willing to give to anyone else up until recently.

“Yes,” Damian had agreed, a tinge of sadness colouring his voice. “Mother gave me up, but… I still left her there alone with grandfather.”

“Talia’s a big girl, Damian. She could have left if she wanted to.” That wasn’t the truth, but Jason didn’t know how much Damian knew about his mother and Ra’s. Bruce had a strict,  _ no telling Damian about the horrors of the League _ rule in place. 

“ _ No,  _ she couldn’t have,” Damian argued. “How could you believe that when you’ve experienced the atrocities of League yourself? Members of the League of Shadows don’t just  _ leave _ , Jason. Look at yourself, look at Cassandra, look at me! Hell, look at Father! We all escaped by the skin of our teeth.”

Jason had always known the kid was smart, but emotional distance and willful ignorance had kept him from seeing it up close. And yeah, he was right, the League had done a real doozy on Jason but he hadn’t known Damian was aware of that. The League was half the reason why he’d come back to Gotham wanting to blow Bruce apart with a bomb planted on the Batmobile. 

“What are you saying, kid?” He’d had a good feeling he knew exactly what Damian was getting at, but the thought made him sick. 

“Never mind, Jason. I’m retiring to bed. Don’t let Father stay up too late.”

Jason watched his brother go, stomping past Alfred with a grumble of, “Goodnight.” Gone was the so-called-innocent kid who demanded to be present every waking hour his father was working. Did Bruce know that his son had just been playing dumb all these years?

When Alfred levelled Jason with a questioning stare, Jason just smiled and said, “Teenagers,” before happily taking his mug of tea off the tray.

It was clear that Alfred hadn’t believed him, but that was okay. 

Still, Jason hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Talia since then and worse yet, he couldn’t stop the guilt from creeping up his back to sit firmly on his shoulder.

It had been almost six months worth of torture and he needed it to end. The only way it would end was to talk to Bruce about it. Thanksgiving was just around the corner and Jason didn’t know if he could make it through a family dinner without throwing up. This had to end, and it had to end today.

—

“Jason,” Bruce said, voice laden with surprise as he looked up from the paperwork on his desk. “Alfred didn’t say you were coming over.”

Jason took a seat in front of Bruce’s desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, yeah, I’m an uninvited guest, whatever,” he said. “Alfred’s in the kitchen making sandwiches and tea. I came to find you myself ‘cause I’ve got a bone to pick with you on behalf of someone who would never pick it on her own.”

“You could never be an uninvited guest in your own home, Jason. Who is this person? Stephanie? What did I do to her now?”

“No, it’s not Steph. But you probably did do something to Steph and you should say sorry.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. It was subtle but it was there. “If not Stephanie then who?”

“Talia.”

Bruce became eerily still but he no longer flinched when people said his wife’s name. He narrowed his eyes at Jason. “What about Talia? Has she been in contact with you again? Damnit, Jason! You can’t let the Leag—”

“Hey, whoa, shut  _ up _ , Bruce,” Jason said, trying to keep his voice from gaining too much heat. The whole protective daddy thing was getting old. “Talia’s not a threat to me or you.”

“That is the boldest lie you have ever told in this house,” Bruce deadpanned. “Is this some sort of hypnosis? What did she do to you?”

“Oh my god!” Jason cried, throwing his hands up. “I haven’t seen Talia in like a year, Bruce. Fucking calm the fuckity fuck down.”

Bruce scowled, his lips pressed into a thin, hard line.

“This is actually the bone I have to pick with you. Why are you obsessed with demonizing Talia. She’s your  _ wife _ . Or, I mean, I think she still is.”

“That marriage was a mistake and if I could erase it from this stream of time without repercussions, I would. Nothing good came from it, save your brother.”

“Wow. That’s pretty gross. You married someone who loves you and would do anything to prove it to you, including throwing me in a Lazarus Pit despite her father's orders and you want to erase it from history.”

“Yes, I did do that and look how that turned out. You took on an alias belonging to the monster that killed you, went around killing other people, and placed a bomb under my  _ car _ .”

“Yeah, and? It’s not like Talia  _ wanted _ me to do that shit. She tried talking me out of it most times. She didn’t even like it when I killed, anyway. It’s not like she’s some mass murderer who likes killing for fun. Sure, I fucking did all that shit but I’m also literally right fucking here, am I not? Who do you have to thank for that?”

Bruce laughed, though it wasn’t a full one. It was more like a scoff of disbelief. “If you’re asking me to send Talia a holiday basket in thanks for her returning my son to me, I’ll have it shipped out first thing tomorrow.”

“You’re an ass.”

“You aren’t the first child of mine to say so.”

For a moment, Jason just sat there staring at the man who had spent  _ six years _ raising him. Was this where this conversation ended? Years worth of guilt and agony all because Bruce was a man with a hero complex who only talked about forgiveness but didn’t know how to properly give it? Was this what they were all doomed to become sooner or later? Jason didn’t know if he could live with that.

“Why did you forgive me, Bruce? After all the fucked up shit I did, why let me back into your life at all?”

“Because you’re my son, Jason.”

The answer was simple. Rehearsed. Mastered.

“Okay, forget about me then. Why did you forgive Selina?”

Bruce’s brow pinched. “For what?”

“For what?!” Jason could have laughed, the question was so absurd. “For running around with Harley and Ivy and  _ Joker _ .”

Bruce at least had the decency to flinch but he didn’t seem to have a comeback, not yet anyway.

Jason continued, “Selina used to steal for  _ fun _ . She wasn’t always Robin Hood, you know and I know you do, in fact, know. Selina has also  _ killed _ her fair share of people. And most ironically? Selina doesn’t give a  _ damn _ about your rules, even now. I know, if it were up to you Selina would be here and she’d never have to raise a finger or work a day in her life and blah blah blah. But that’s not who Selina is and that’s not why you like her. You like her because she doesn’t play by your rules, which is hypocritical when I had to work my fucking ass off just to walk into this house unannounced and uninvited.”

“Is that what this is about?” Bruce asked coldly. “You’re throwing a tantrum because I had an issue with your methods and punished you accordingly?”

“I’m not throwing a fucking tantrum, Bruce!” Okay, maybe the yelling wasn’t helping his case at all, but he wasn’t a  _ baby _ . “I’m upset because your morals are inconsistent. You just stick people with a label because it means you won’t have to deal with them later. Talia is big and bad because you don’t want to work things out.”

“There is nothing to work out, Jason.”

“Like hell! You share a  _ son _ .”

Bruce’s gaze flickered to the left. Guilt. “Damian understands why he can’t see his mother. Besides, bringing him here was her idea.”

“Yeah. Her idea to get Damian away from Ra’s. She traded herself in for your kids freedom and you let her.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bullshit, Bruce!” It took everything in his power not to sock his old man in the face. Instead, he got up and paced back and forth.

“You’re going to wear a hole in my rug.”

“Fuck your rug. Did you know that Damian feels guilty about Talia? He brought it up to me once out of the blue. Says he felt like he left his mother there to die.” Damian hadn’t said the die part, but Jason could read between the lines. “Isn’t that fucked up? A thirteen-year-old knows better than you.”

“Talia made her choice. She made her choice a long time ago, Jason.”

Jason stopped pacing to level Bruce with a heated glare. “Made her choice just like Damian made his choice? How long did it take Damian to stop hero-worshipping Ra’s, huh? And that was only ten years worth of brainwashing.”

Finally, Bruce sighed and it was a sad one at that. “Jason. I tried. I tried so many times. I’m only human. I can only fail so much.”

His words were earnest, which is probably why Jason stopped pacing. “Damian’s not the only one who feels guilty,” Jason confessed.

“Oh, Jay…” Bruce got up from his seat and just stood beside him. There was no hugging or any sort of awkward reaches, but it was nice not to have a desk between them. “You care for Talia.”

It was like Bruce had some sort of epiphany but Jason couldn’t find it in him to mock his father for taking so long to realize the truth. So, he just shrugged with a jerky nod. He refused to look at Bruce, unsure of what exactly he’d see there. Ironic, since he was the one who was always taking a jackhammer to Bruce’s emotional walls. He found a picture of Damian to stare at. His smiling face was a good reminder of why Jason was doing this at all.

“Ra’s abuses her you know. I’ve seen it,” Jason said quietly, refusing to really  _ think _ on it. If he started thinking on it, he’d envision it and that wasn’t something Jason ever wanted to see again. It would never be a competition, but Ra’s abuse made Jason sick in a whole other way that Willis’ hadn’t. 

“Me too,” Bruce said heavily. “I’ve seen many horrors, but watching the way Ra’s would strike Talia down will always…” He shook his head. “Jason, you need to believe me when I say I tried. She was my first lesson that I… That I can’t save everyone.”

“Do you still love her?” Jason took his eyes off the picture of Damian to look his father in the eye. He didn’t know why he was asking. It wasn’t like it mattered. It wasn’t like it would change anything.

“What do you think?”

Jason chewed the inside of his lip before he said, “I think you demonize her to make the fact that you couldn’t save her easier. I think you did that to me, too.”

“Hn,” Bruce grunted, neither in agreement or disagreement.

“And I think… if you could do that to me despite…”  _ despite still loving me _ . “Despite welcoming me back, then I don’t think it’s far fetched for you to do that to your wife. But, if I’m right then you need to stop, because losing your support? Losing your belief that I could do better? Be better? It only drove me further away. I bet it’s the same for Talia.”

“Jason, I’m—”

He held up his hand for Bruce to stop. “This isn’t about  _ me _ , Bruce. I really meant it when I said that, but you  _ know _ how I feel about women and the people who abuse them.”

Bruce nodded, just the once, serious and solemn.

“Fix it, Bruce. I don’t care how, just fix it. Because I know she still loves you and I know for a fact that she loves Damian. You can’t keep blaming her for circumstances out of her control. I know it’s complicated, but so was I. If Damian and I deserve rehabilitation, Talia does too, okay? And Damian deserves to have his mom around. God knows, I’d kill to have mine.”

“Jason… what you ask for is noble, but I don’t know if Talia would be receptive.”

“Yeah? Well, the Batman I know never stops trying.”

Bruce smiled, just a little. “You might not be Robin anymore, but you’re still here to keep Batman in line aren’t you?”

Jason couldn’t help the smirk that pulled at the edge of his lip. “You know what they say… once a Robin always a Robin.” His eye caught the portrait of Damian once again.

“And the Robins always stick together don’t they?”

When Jason looked back at Bruce, he saw his father staring at the exact same picture.

Jason crossed his arms over his chest again, this time in satisfaction. “Yeah. We do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
You can all follow me at Ribbon-Couture.tumblr.com to send me any sort of prompts and stuff if you’d like! I’d love to write for the Batfam and Talia more, but it’ll have to only be short stuff since I’m so busy.
> 
> Anyway! This was inspired by Morrison saying Talia never raped Bruce, which, if you haven’t seen that quote you can read it here: https://ribbon-couture.tumblr.com/post/187179789210/grant-morrison-on-talia I’m really tired of Talia being demonized, especially since it’s partially his fault that she is :/
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this fic and if you liked it, please leave me some kudos and a comment!! 💕


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